Comment on YSK: YouTube views went down since mid-August because they no longer count views of not logged in users

Dettweiler42@lemmy.dbzer0.com ⁨2⁩ ⁨days⁩ ago

• dom@lemmy.ca ⁨2⁩ ⁨days⁩ ago

  I’ve heard about this from a number of youtubers. It seems to be a much bigger dip than they’ve ever seen

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• morgan_423@lemmy.world ⁨2⁩ ⁨days⁩ ago

  It’s not related. A bunch of different content creators across a bajillion different genres have publicly shared that it’s one specific type of view (desktop views) affected in their analytics (no other view type shows any statistical difference), and it’s acting the same way for everyone.

  It’s just not that total views are down… it’s evidence that YouTube has changed the way they are counting the views of PC viewers.

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  • AlfredoJohn@sh.itjust.works ⁨2⁩ ⁨days⁩ ago

    Yeah and first it was most of the views were definitely going down because of restricted mode despite that it was a feature used by a like a fraction of a percent of users and was over a decade old. None of the specific information getting parroted around has actually made any sense. Less people watching on desktop can also track with less people actually owning desktops or using them to watch YouTube, couple that with the fact they just got a drop of viewership and now they cant accept the common demonanator being that their videos are just getting less views

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    • morgan_423@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨day⁩ ago

      Less people watching on desktop can also track with less people actually owning desktops or using them to watch YouTube

      Not what’s happening. The change can be pinpointed to an exact specific date for everyone. It’s just statistically impossible to explain that away as “fewer people are watching”

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    • neclimdul@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨day⁩ ago

      I’m very skeptical of that argument.

      1. Millions of people didn’t throw out their desktops overnight.
      2. Lots of tech channels finding their core audience that’s actively supporting and often growing on platforms like patreon aren’t showing up in their metrics while fluff videos are getting picked up outside their community on mobile and "performing well“.

      So something definitely seems to be going on.

      To me, ads contributing to "views“ metrics seems the most logical since YT wants to incentivise ad watching but I have to agree it feels like every day someone has proven a new theory so it’s hard to say what exactly is going on.

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